Report on Field Visit to the South
by Kamal Abdelnour and Imad Abou Jaoude

From Tibnine, we drove through a narrow road in what used to be the green agricultural area of the neighboring village of Braachit. These fields are now completely burnt along with all their trees and crops due to the extensive shelling. Braachit is a Shiite-Christian village where the Christians are a minority (50 families). In this village, the Christian district took the largest share of destruction. Most of the Christians houses are either completely destroyed or badly damaged due to the fact that Hezbollah fighters were launching rockets from this district (as one of the eyewitnesses informed us). More suffering is awaiting the Christian community here since most of their income is from the lost agricultural products of watermelon, olive trees and wheat. We visited the village church of Saint Elie and saw the damages to its roof as well as to its multi-purpose hall, which requires extensive repairs.The greatest damage that we observed to the churches of the region was the complete destruction of the Our Lady Church of Safad El Battikh. This church needs to be completely reconstructed.

After Safad El Batikh village, we headed towards the Christian village of Ain Ebel and met Father Hanna Sleiman and Mr. Mazen Chaaya (of the local committee) who gave us a brief description of the villages damages and informed us about their basic needs for electricity and water. We also visited the two churches of the parish which were hit by the bombs as well as a few of the 200 war affected houses (out of a total of 450 houses in the village). This high number of damages was due to the street fighting in the village between Hezbollah and Israelis. In this village, we noticed that around 200 families returned despite the scattered unexploded bombs and mines between the houses and fields; the rest of the families are awaiting the arrival of the Lebanese army to provide a safer environment for the residents. As in Braachit, the main income of the villagers is from agriculture and raising cattle and poultry, and these activities were greatly affected by the war.

Our final visit was to Yaroun village which is also a Christian-Shiite village next to the Lebanon-Israel border. The damages and needs are the same as in Ain Ebel. The church (Saint George Church) was hit through the roof and needs complete reparation. The houses of this village (70% belonging to Christians) were very damaged and need to be fixed as well as the residence of the bishop and the dispensary run by the Basilian Chouerite Sisters. The basic needs of the villagers are:

Regaining water and electrical resources

Removal of all unexploded bombs from the streets and fields

Providing an urgent source of food for the villagers who lost their crops, cattle and poultry and who are not receiving any from the government due to its disorganized distribution methods

Provide a safer environment to the villagers through the arrival of the Lebanese army

Our trip ended here because we had a long distance to travel back and because of the security situation; there were extensive flights of Israeli aircrafts above our heads and continuous Israeli penetration at the border, very close to our location.